Weekly Wellbeing: The Gender Unicorn

What’s this all mean? Well, you can see that gender identity, gender expression, sex assigned at birth, and physical and emotional attraction are split into five separate parts, and most exist on a spectrum. You can fill in where you sit on each  spectrum, recognising that it’s not binary, but rather a range of thoughts and feelings that come together to make you, you!

Here’s some important definitions:

Gender identity is represented by the rainbow, and is what the unicorn is thinking about. It’s all about how someone feels about their own gender —  whether it’s male, female, neither of these, both, or another gender(s). There are many different understandings of gender, and we have a handy article here on gender identity.

Your gender expression is represented by the green dots outside the unicorn, and is the physical representation of your gender identity through clothing, hairstyle, voice, or body. Many gender diverse people will choose to consider hormones, surgery and other types of gender-affirming care in order to feel aligned with their gender identity. These are options you can raise with supportive professional help. Your gender expression may also change over time based on your gender identity!

Your sex assigned at birth is represented by the DNA strand on the unicorn. This is the classification of someone as male, female, intersex, or another sex based on a combination of anatomy, hormones and chromosomes.

Who you are physically and emotionally attracted to is often referred to as your ‘sexuality’.  Physical attraction refers to being characteristics you find physically or sexually attractive. It can be influenced by a variety of factors, including someone’s gender identity, expression, or the sex they were assigned at birth. 

This differs from emotional attraction, which refers to the characteristics you find emotionally or romantically attractive. While the two can often come hand in hand, you might find that you’re emotionally attracted to someone but not physically attracted to them, or vice versa. 

Attraction exists on a spectrum too. You may be attracted to two or more genders, but you feel attracted to one more than others. Or you may only be attracted to one gender, and not at all to the others. 

How would I do my gender unicorn?

Watch our TikTok to see how to use the Gender Unicorn, and have a look at my own example below.

Here is my gender unicorn 🦄.

I consider myself as non-binary with some female identification, so I placed my gender identity in this order. I don’t identify as male at all, so I placed my pin at the left of the line.

My gender expression is generally quite alternative (my friends picked out my enby-ness through my design choices before I did), though I have a more feminine figure, hair and sometimes dress more feminine in dresses and light makeup. Gender expression is something that we can change up whenever we feel like it, and I’m planning to lean into some more masculine outfits soon!

My sex assigned at birth is female, so I filled out that circle.

Being asexual and pansexual, I am rarely physically attracted to other genders, however I am romantically attracted to all genders. That’s why my physical and emotional attraction differs.

Final thoughts

Hopefully, the Gender Unicorn helps you to feel more sure of your identity and comfortable in who you are. Just remember: no matter what your gender identity is, or who you’re attracted to, you are enough, exactly as you are. You don’t have to fit a neat label. You can just be you.

If you’d like, you can fill out your own gender unicorn and show it here!